A Leader In B-School Innovation, Gies Explores New Offerings In The Undergraduate Space

Brooke Elliott (right), who leads the online programs at the Gies College of Business as an Associate Dean, poses with an iMBA student at iConverge 2021, the college’s in-person celebration for students past and present. Courtesy photo

Are there other schools that you know of that are offering this level of stackability?

There are a few others, but it is not prevalent. Duke would be one — it does allow stackability of an MSM into their MBA now. Not in an as affordable a way.

I do believe we’re differentiated when you think about our entire portfolio of stackability. I know of no other business school, and probably no other institution, where you can start with a MOOC, stack a MOOC into a single course, a single course into a certificate, a certificate into a degree, a degree into another degree. I think it’s that entire portfolio that is attractive and really differentiates what we do, all in a very affordable, flexible way.

Since you first announced the Gies iMBA, the market has really exploded. And you’ve seen others follow in your footsteps: Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, for example, offered a $24K online MBA a couple of years ago. What is your assessment of the online market now? Is it getting crowded?

The online market has increased tremendously in terms of competitiveness. Poets&Quants wrote an article about how there are now more online MBA students than residential MBAs. We’ve seen explosive growth.

When we entered the market in 2016, we were the only MBA from a research one institution under $23,000. Right now, Boston University is the only other top institution in the market at that price point. As we’ve seen other peer institutions enter the market — whether it’s other big 10 institutions or even some of the M7 institutions — they’re not entering at an affordable price point. I mean, Wharton is going to launch an online MBA for $218,000, and there are individuals that are going to be willing to make that type of investment.

But in our space, where we think about affordable, flexible, high quality education, there are still very few players. I attribute that to a couple of things. One, we were a first mover. Two, and the biggest thing that I think allows us to be successful and keeps others from entering in the way that we have, is that it’s mission consistent. We are a land grant institution. We know why we’re doing it, and we believe in it. For most other institutions, that is not necessarily top of mind. It’s not at the core of who they are as the institution and who they’ve been for over 100 years, but it is for us.

Can you explain your partnership with Coursera?

It’s our content. It’s our faculty. It’s our degree. I always try to make that very clear. We host the high engagement portion of the content on our own campus; It’s the same degree that we’ve always offered at the University of Illinois, it’s just in a more flexible, affordable format.

At the same time, Coursera has been an outstanding partner. There are two things from a value perspective that they provide: One, they provide access to a platform with 100 million+ learners that have self selected; Those learners already have an inclination to pursue online education and have expressed an inclination for lifelong learning. When we think about the market that we’re trying to attract and the market that Coursera can bring, we’re very aligned.

Two, the reason we chose Coursera as a partner early on in 2016 is because we were mission aligned. Coursera started as providing free access to high quality educational content to serve learners from around the world. And that’s our mission as well. And so that’s allowed us to be a great partner. They provide tremendous value in terms of insights into that learner market, which has grown tremendously over the last five years: What content is most in demand for learners? What content is most career relevant? And what types of educational products in terms of duration, engagement, flexibility, are learners gravitating towards?

University of Illinois Gies College of Business ranks No. 12 in Poets&Quants’ annual ranking of best undergraduate business schools.

Are there any other Gies innovations that you’re developing now that we can tease out? Any innovations for the undergraduate or executive space?

We’re always trying to think about what’s coming next. I think part of it is just continuing to think about this portfolio of stackable educational products. You know, I think about the MOOC like bite-sized education, but I can imagine something coming before the MOOC, and we’re continuing to explore new educational offerings that would be both credit and non-credit bearing that would serve a learner throughout their lifetime. Not only, again, driving learners through a path towards a degree, but really serving learners on the other side of that degree.

We now have thousands of learners who are alums of our portfolio of online degrees, and we want to continue to serve that population. We recognize that an offering that is credit bearing might not always meet the needs of learners who need upskilling. We actually just created a brand new associate dean position in the Gies College of Business for professional education pathways. So, it’s pathways into our degrees, but also pathways outside of our degrees so that learners can continue to upskill with skills that are career relevant.

At Gies, we have undergraduate programs, graduate programs, and now professional education pathways is our third pillar from an academic perspective. That’s a huge shift for an academic institution to have a pillar that’s led by an associate dean that is not focused on degrees. It’s sending a real signal about how we’ve changed, how we continue to change, and how we intend to continue to expand the learners that we serve.

The next big thing, I think, that you’ll see from Gies is we’re starting to think about how we can use what we’ve learned in the graduate education space to start to transform what we do in the undergraduate education space. That is a much more heterogeneous market, but there is tremendous opportunity for us to think about how we serve learners, both within the College of Business and at the University of Illinois.

DON’T MISS: DEAN OF THE YEAR: JEFFREY BROWN OF GIES COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND 2021 MOST DISRUPTIVE BUSINESS SCHOOL STARTUPS: NEPHRA, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS (GIES)